"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Saturday, March 03, 2018

L'etat, c'est moi!

The United States has an $800 Billion Dollar Yearly Trade Deficit because of our “very stupid” trade deals and policies. Our jobs and wealth are being given to other countries that have taken advantage of us for years. They laugh at what fools our leaders have been. No more!

If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S. They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!

Yes, there is a pattern here. The world is laughing at us, and Trump will not have it!

In actual fact, the world is appalled by Trump, and we should all be laughing at him, because his pronouncements mean no more now than they did when he was private citizen Trump. He is not going to raise taxes and fees on imports, or unilaterally and single-handedly impose "a Tax on their Cars". First, because he can't, only Congress can. Second, because a tweet is not a policy proposal, not even a suggestion to Congress as to what a law should look like.

This is your uncle at Thanksgiving, drunk at the end of the table and raving. Sadly, your drunk crazy uncle is the POTUS, and he's inviting retaliation. But it won't happen against him directly, it will happen against the GOP*. (*Well, the nation and the GOP. We will take it in the neck while Trump's buddies turn it into golden parachutes. Same as it ever was.) Turns out farmers don't want NAFTA messed up, and car makers aren't going to be happy with steel tariffs, anymore than plane manufacturers are going to welcome higher aluminum prices.

The world is not laughing at us. The world is wondering how the drunk uncle got control of the government. The joke is he thinks he does have control of the government. But it's really more like this: